Anniversary Card & Envelope

Today I am celebrating my 6th anniversary with my wonderful husband! I thought I would share with you the card and matching envelope I made, as well as some of the techniques I used to make them.

I chose some fun papers and brads from BoBunny. Also used were some orange ribbon, rub-ons, black stickles, black distress ink, and (my favorite) my swivel-head X-acto knife.




Here are how the card and envelope turned out...



For my "Happy Anniversary" tag on the card, I cut three circles of slightly varying diameter. I ran my scissors around the edges to distress them, inked them with distress ink. I used rub-on letters for the wording, another light blue rub-on above and below the lettering, and used black stickles around the edges of the top layer.

I used my swivel-head X-acto knife to cut around one of the patterns on the orange paper. To distress it, I simply curled the edges up and scrunched (that's a technical term ;) ) them then inked them with disress ink. The green paper I distressed in the same way as the tag above. I grunged up the ribbon with a little bit of inking. The black dots are stickles.

For the flower on the envelope, I cut out 3 randomly shaped pieces of orange paper of varying size. I crumpled them so they would look more 3-D when layered, inked the edges with turquiose ink, and added black stickles around the edges. The leaves were made the same way.

I'm happy to report my hubby loved the card!
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In other news, I won a contest on the BoBunny blog during their CHA sneak peek week a couple of weeks ago! I just received my prize in the mail this weekend and thought I would share. Its some brand spankin' new papers and stickers from the BoBunny Gypsy collection! I've been drooling over these papers since the colors are so in sync with my websites. When I get a chance, I'm going to use them to make a new header for the blog so be on the lookout!

More CHA 2009 Sneak Peeks!

CHA is going on this week, and there are loads of fun new scrappy goodness being let loose in the world. I wanted to share some more sneak peeks of what we can expect to start seeing in stores the coming months. CAUTION: This post of picture heavy!

Let's start with some Maya Road! They have a ton of new product being released this fall. You can find all of Maya Road's new releases in their 2009 CHA catalog. This is just a small bit of what's to come... (Click on either picture to see a larger version.)



Next up, Xyron's Creatopia! If you are into tools, this could be the next big must have. It makes stickers, laminates, cuts, and embosses. And did I mention it fits 12x12 paper?? You can find out more about it on Xyron's Scrapbook.com blog.


Check out this up and coming scrapbook company, TaDa Creative Studios. I'm infatuated with their E-I-E-I-O collection. You can see all four new releases in full on their website.



Cuttlebug is rolling out (no pun intended!) some new embossing folders for the Christmas holidays. You can them all on the Cuttlebug blog.


Theresa Collins has several new products debuting, including these adorable Bingo cards and memo pads. For more, visit the Theresa Collins Scrapbook.com blog.



For great travel-themed papers, looks no further than Creative Imaginations' new Trip & Travel collection. You can see all of their new collections (including several new Christmas collections) on their Scrapbook.com blog.


I always look forward to what's new coming from 7gypsies. Their vintage feel really appeals to me! Check out this fabulous wood frame. Love it! You can see all of 7gypsies CHA 2009 releases on their website.


For more CHA 2009 sneak peeks visit the websites of KI Memories, Prima, Karen Foster, Three Bugs in a Rug, and Crate Paper.

T-Shirt Tuesday - Paper, Epoxy, Scissors

Time for another T-Shirt Tuesday! Looking back at our group photo from the Scrapbook Expo, Lori (2nd from last) is sporting the Paper, Epoxy, Scissors tee. You know the old game Paper, Rock, Scissors... Well this is how a scrapbooker would play! Paper, Epoxy, Scissors!

This design is full of the fun, vibrant colors of lime, pink, and teal. Great colors for summer!

I've added a couple of new designs to The Scrap Shoppe this week. Be sure to stop by and check them out! Especially if you're addicted to buying scrapbook paper (like I am!). ;) As always, the two newest designs in the store can be found featured on The Scrap Shoppe's front page.

Keep It Simple!A 12 Month Album

As a new mom, I know it is so easy to get overwhelmed with all those photos of baby. The first thing you need to do is go ahead and admit to yourself you will not be able to scrapbook every single photo of your child that you take. Pick out the ones you deem most special and put the rest in a regular photo album. Trust me, it will save your sanity!

While I do have a 12x12 album devoted to layouts of my son, I know it will take forever for me to fill it up. Not only that, but I scrapbook photos as the mood strikes me. That means it may not be in chronological order. That can make waiting for a complete album to show off a long time coming. My solution? Mini albums!

Here, I've made a mini album devoted to the first year of my son's life. Each page shows a picture that I feel represents that month. I used the Little Yellow Bicycle Baby Safari collection. What is great about this collection is that one of the pieces of the collection are month journaling cards! Talk about making my job easy. I figure I can show off this album at my DS's birthday party in September and everyone can see how he's grown.

I've chosen the cover and a few of my favorite pages to showcase. You can see all of the pages in my Scrapbook.com gallery. We're only through month 10 at the moment, so I will complete the album in a couple of months!







The idea of throwing together a mini album or only scrapbooking a few choice photos not only goes for baby photos, but those hundreds of photos you took while on vacation, photos of your pets, special occasions, etc.

Remember, keep it simple, don't try to scrap everything, and don't get overwhelmed!

CHA Sneak Peeks& a Nifty Little Tool

I want to share a few new lines that will be debuting at CHA next weekend.

First up we have my always favorite company, BoBunny. They have sooo many cute new lines coming out its not even funny! My favorite two are Flutter Butter and Gypsy. There are several other lines as well as two Christmas collections, St. Nick and Tis the Season, and a Halloween collection, Boo Crew. One of the exciting things BoBunny is adding to their collections this year are die cut papers. Fun!!

Flutter Butter is reminiscent of Abbey Road (which we all know is my favorite paper line). Here are some select papers from the collection.




Do the colors in the Gypsy collection look familiar? I cannot wait to get my hands this line and make a new header for the blog. How cute will that be?




One of my other favorite scrapbook companies is Little Yellow Bicycle. They have several new collections they will be debuting at CHA as well. One of my faves is Sharon Ann Autumn Bliss. I love the warm tones. One of the best things about LYB is the amount and variability of items them put in their collections. We're talking from cardstock to brads to transparencies to rub-ons. Your imagination will never cease of things to do with their products simply because they give you so much to work with! Here's a sneak peek at Autumn Bliss...





Now for that nifty little tool I mentioned in the title... Have you seen the new I-Top Brad-Making Tool from Imaginisce? You can make your own brads out of whatever your heart desires. I saw this tool and some samples brads when I was at Archiver's a couple of weeks ago. There were brads made out of photos, fabric, and paper.

It could get pricey getting all of the gadgets that go along with the I-Top tool (punches, brads, templates), but if you really like brads and custom brads at that, you might want to invest in this tool!

T-Shirt Tuesday - Top 10 Reasons to Scrapbook

You may recall that in last week's T-Shirt Tuesday I shared a picture of myself and my girlfriends in our scrapbook t-shirts ready to go to the Scrapbook Expo. Its time to share the next shirt for this week's T-shirt Tuesday!

Next up is the shirt I was wearing which is the very popular Top 10 Reasons to Scrapbook. It features 10 fun reasons to scrapbook on the back of the shirt and a cute pair of scallop scissors on the front pocket area.


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If you haven't been over to the The Scrap Shoppe website this week, you might want to check it out. Its gotten a makeover! I loved the color scheme of the blog so much I moved it over to the store. I've also decorated our Twitter page to match. Be sure to have a look!

Homemade Bride's Survival Kit

I'm happy to say we survived the bachelorette party and the wedding this weekend, and my sis-in-law is happily cruising somewhere on the Caribbean even as I type. Since I have weddings on the brain, I thought I would share a crafty wedding project.

Saturday I threw together a quick survival kit for the bride. Nothing fancy, just the must-haves that might be overlooked on the wedding day. If I had thought about it sooner I would have made something a little nicer. About three years ago I made a Bride's Survival Kit for a girlfriend of mine. Luckily I documented the process *just in case*.

This is an undecorated purse that I purchased from Hobby Lobby.


I used a glue stick to adhere colorful tissue paper to the inside of the purse and inked along the inside lip.


I inked the outside of the purse with pink ink, and added some black ribbon to dress it up. I found some very cute Rusty Pickle paper that I adhered to the front and back of the purse. Mod Podge works great as an adhesive here, just don't use too much or it will be too wet and wrinkle the paper. I cut a couple different sized squares of paper to put in the center of the purse. I used scallop-edge scissors on the larger square of paper. The flower in the center is actually a button with the shank removed. I finished it off by inking the edge of the paper with black ink.


Fill the purse with things the bride might need on the day of the wedding such as
pain reliever
safety pins
scissors
mints
hair spray
tissue
antacids
bobby pins
needle & thread
snacks
perfume
wet wipes
straws
face powder
deoderant
water
clear nail polish

The purse is something the bride can also carry on her honeymoon (be sure to put liquids in a plastic baggy if she uses it as a carry-on on the airplane) or just store for emergencies.

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Today I finally unpacked all of the scrappy goodness I bought at the Scrapbook Expo last weekend. At least I pulled it out long enough to take a picture of it! I still need to get it organized into my scrap nook. I'm not sure I even want to total the receipts from all of this...


And the stash from Archiver's...


I can't wait to play with it all!